A Christmas Sermon

Several people asked me for the text of my sermon at Midnight Mass last night. I had not recorded it, so here is the written text. What I actually said may have been a little different. . .

Twenty years ago tonight I was doing much the same thing as I am doing here. But it was in a church in Jordan, and among the congregation were twenty deaf children from the finest deaf school in the Middle East. Most were Palestinian, several from Gaza. At the end of the service they sang in sign language ‘Away in a manger.’ It moved people that these little Muslim kids, cared for in a Christian school, should so joyfully sing our carol. No one mentioned my sermon that Christmas; they remembered the words becoming flesh.

The following morning I set off for Damascus to take the Christmas service there, and then on to Aleppo. Today those cities are racked by civil war. Churches, mosques, hospitals have been destroyed, and evil men are trying to divide Arab against Kurd, Muslim against Christian or Druze, Shia against Sunni. For those of us who have lived in Syria this is almost inexpressibly horrendous.

And it is because of this that we must celebrate this Christmas with a special joy. For God comes among us not as a male, not as a Judean, not as a speaker of Aramaic: St John insists that the Word was made flesh. This common substance which unites us all, deaf and hearing, black and white, men and women, gay and straight and even, it must be said, Welsh and English.

While the Church has got itself excited about women bishops I have thought about the people I loved in Syria when I spent 5 years among them, Christian, Muslim, Druze, men and women. For God isn’t too interested in church politics. He is concerned with the world, he is concerned with all people. With every one of us here, and with all those outside who never bring their faces into a church building.

And God shares in our common human experience. As St John puts it, ‘The Word became flesh.’ His Reason, usually translated as Word, becomes human and lives among us. Actually, that really means to pitch one’s tent. God comes and pitches his tent among us, just like the tent of the presence of God went around with the Israelites in their wanderings, so God in the person of Jesus pitches his tent and journeys with us.

He journeyed with me 20 years ago through Jordan and Syria; and he is still journeying with people their in their suffering.  

And he is journeying with you.

In the choir there is a wall-painting of Mary, Joseph and Jesus travelling. It is not clear where they are going. They might be refugees fleeing violence. Oddly, they don’t look like the hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing the civil war. I did wander if they are just on the way to the family for Christmas.

For all the difficult travelling that people have at Christmas, to be with the people who matter to them, there has been no greater journey than the invisible, unknowable God becoming flesh in order to travel with us.

God with us. Not a static god stuck in a Temple, but a God who travels along with you and me, knowing what it is like to be you and me, and hoping that we will discover what it is to be God,

Gay Marriage, Women Bishops and the Church of England

I have not been very excited about the idea of gay marriage. Being in a civil partnership, I always think of it as being a same-sex form of marriage, but without the historical, cultural and legal baggage. After all, when I interview people who want to get married I need to know if they are already in a civil partnership, because if they are, I cannot proceed with the marriage. On top of that, there is a mass of case law connected with annulment due to non-consummation which is meaningless in terms of civil partnerships.
What I would like is for the church to have the ability to bless relationships, to encourage love and faithfulness and to support the mutual society, help and comfort found in good relationships.

I know many members of the Church of England, and many who have an affection for the church of the people, who would like the church to bless civil partnerships, and many who would like marriage to be between people of the same sex, as well as between a man and a woman. I think the legislation could be complicated, but it would give the church a wonderful opportunity if this latter were to come to pass.

Once again the conservative evangelicals have pushed us all around. They pressurise the bishops, because the middle of the road majority just want to get on with things. These biblical troglodytes once again have cherry-picked verses from the scriptures to pretend that there is ONE biblical view of marriage. Which one, I would like to ask: is Abraham our ideal, or Solomon? Or should we listen to Jesus when he tells us to leave the family behind in following him? So they invent Christian Marriage out of a failure to read the Scriptures seriously and then lead us into darkness.

So the government, aware of the Orks lurking, but wanting to be seen as modern, create a situation in which the law of marriage for the first time in English history will be different in church from the rest of the state. This is saying to the Church of England, 'You no longer matter. You are an irrelevance, and you are to be cut out of the opportunity to pour grace into relationships which long for it.'

And who can blame the Government? They have seen this outrage in which the Dark Lord sent his minions into the Synod deliberately to prevent the will of the vast majority, the expressed will of the General Synod and of forty Diocesan Synods out of forty-two, to prevent its will, which surely is the will of the Holy Spirit, being done.

Who do these literalist flat-earthers think they are? Often well-funded organisations with money from the USA's fundamentalists, they have a confidence to push and bully. And the will of God is not done. The God who sees no difference between Male and Female is being thwarted by these book-worshippers, these people who treat the Bible as though it is the Qur'an.

Our Bishops must stop accepting such as ordinands, to spread the bigotry in churches. The Jesus whom we love and adore is the one whose arms are spread out in love to all people, but these want his hands bound, for him to stagger out of his tomb wrapped tightly in words and laws. But the wrappings were not there to bind him any longer and the resurrection is about overcoming these powers of darkness, of unloosing the chains of fundamentalism, and allowing the Holy Spirit to breathe her love across the world.

Women Bishops? Don't panic

First, let us remember that most people's dealing with the clergy of the Church of England is at parish level. The ordination of women as priests twenty years ago has been a seismic shift in the Church and it is all the better for it. It may be significant that the diocese of Chichester which seems racked with problems connected to abuse is the most institutionally anti-women one in the Church of England. Most people on the edge of the church come across their women vicars at weddings and funerals, at Christmas, where, in my experience, they have a type of pastoral care very different from that of the men: it is good to have both in the Church of England.

Secondly, the vote was lost in the House of Laity. The extremes of the church often consist of the most passionate, and the result is that the House of Laity is very unrepresentative of the Church nationally. It is a matter for the huge, moderate and welcoming middle of the church to get onto Synod and stop this nonsense. Most people in the pews want women in leadership.

Thirdly, the extremes. The sort of Anglo-Catholics who oppose women priests often seem to have a total blindspot when it comes to reality. The lovers of Rome forgets that the Pope doesn't recognise us as a real church and these priests as real priests. We are the Church of England which, after centuries of tension with the imperialist master in the Vatican claimed once again that we do not need to be told what to do by a legalistically-minded and corrupt foreign leadership. The Church of England is as it is because we took on renaissance thought, the enlightenment and the historic and scientific method of thought, and are open to the real world. We don't need Rome. Rome follows us, usually centuries later. One day the Roman Catholics will have married clergy, then women clergy. We are the Research and Development Arm of the Universal Church.

And when it comes to some of these Evangelicals, the Reform type. They treat the Scriptures of the Church as though they are the Qur'an. They say nonsensical things like, 'The Bible teaches. . .' The Bible can be used for every viewpoint to prove anything. It is not Law. That is why we are Christians and not Jews. We do not need Laws to be saved. They start with a view and find Scriptural proof, as though Nahum or Jude had the final word. They forget that it is Christ who is God's Word, and that the Holy Spirit is leading us, as she has always led us into new truths. Their thinking is naive and lazy and they are a terrible threat to truth: and Jesus Christ is Truth, not some random quotation from Scripture.

Ten years ago I thought that Rowan Williams could deal with these things. His legacy is that he didn't. The great teacher didn't teach.

So our challenge is to demand reality and honesty from the bullying branches of the Church, and let our (often wonderful) women priests continue their ministry.

On Bishops - remembering Philip Strong

With Justin Welby's recent appointment, my thoughts have been on Bishops. Actually on one particular Bishop, Philip Strong, who was a pioneering missionary in Papua New Guinea from 1936 and then leader of the Anglican Church in Australia from 1962 to 1970.
I knew him in his last few years, and he was a passionate and prayerful Anglo-Catholic, but what made him very significant was a radio broadcast he made in PNG in 1942, which can be read at http://anglicanhistory.org/aus/png/strong_message1942.html.

He led a large mission force who were faced with the approaching Japanese invasion. Strong said clearly in his broadcast that he, and his co-workers had to stay.

 'We could not leave unless God, who called us, required it of us, and our spiritual instinct tells us He would never require such a thing at such an hour.

Our people need us now more than ever before in the whole history of the mission.  .  .

No, my bothers and sisters, fellow workers in Christ, whatever others my do, we cannot leave. We shall not leave. We shall stand by our trust. We shall stand by our vocation.'

Of course in Britain the lot of the Bishops and clergy is not like this. The new archbishop will not face a terrifying invasion. But if we are to be a church which has a backbone, we need to remember people like Philip Strong, and his missionaries, eight of whom were martyred by the Japanese.

Strong advocated taking people into the hills, rather than staying to be killed, and his practical advice as well as his honest and heroic vision is a  model for us all.

A New Archbishop of Canterbury

So Rowan is now no longer of interest to the media.  He can get back to what he is so good at, being a free academic to inspire people.

And now Eton has provided Prince William, the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am something of a fan of Eton; and have known some very nice people from there. But what has happened in the last 30 years is that the UK can no longer provide an education which will bring people from the state system to positions of leadership. I have no problem with +Justin: but what this says about our society and church is profoundly worrying.

Giles Fraser in the Guardian today (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/nov/09/justin-welby-archbishop-infantile-projections?INTCMP=SRCH) made a very good point about the desperate way in which people want a father-figure. The great thing about the Church of England is that Bishops have so little power. The Archbishop has no legal power outside his diocese, and of course we do not depend on an infallible Pope. It allows people the freedom to think without being stuck with a hard line in dogma, but within a framework and tradition.

The problem has been that the accidental growth of the Anglican Communion is that people imagine we have to be like the Roman Catholics. We don't. We could be like the Orthodox and simply be a family with no bureaucracy, office or binding statements. No need for a father figure, just being together as families are.

In the end +Justin needs to encourage people to continue being the church where they are, and the last thing we want is an Anglican pope.

A Carpet from Aleppo

One of the first times I visited Aleppo must have been in 1992, when I was Chaplain in Jordan and was covering Syria as well, and so I made a visit not just to the city and the Armenian Evangelical church where we were kindly welcomed, but to the wonderful Suq. I have never been in such a wonderful place for shopping: not even in Jerusalem, when it was in Jordanian control, and not even Istanbul or Damascus, Erbil, Marrakesh or Cairo or Gaziantep. Aleppo's grid-based sloping covered Suq was seemingly endless with meat hanging in the butchers' section, wool being processed and gold glittering, and, in the more touristy parts the wittiest suq-boys.
I bought a Persian rug.

When I saw the footage of the conflagration ripping through the ancient Suq I was appalled. Terrible as the destruction of people's lives has been over these last years, nothing hit me as hard as this. I was slightly ashamed that I reacted like this. Surely, people's lives are more than these old stones.

But for me the warren of tunnels which makes Aleppo's market area is about people's lived. It is about the history of Aleppo (going back to Roman times) and of course that history is a main part of Allepan people's pride: they have a real sense that this is a great city, and the domination by Damascus over the last 90 years has been humiliating for them. Shakespeare doesn't mention Damascus, or Beirut: but Aleppo, of course. It is the great city of the Levant because of the Suq, because of this warren of shops, of trading. When we read Revelation last year, and heard of
The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men
It was to Aleppo that my mind went.
The terrible destruction seems to have been partly the work of the small number of foreign fighters who seem deliberately to have settled in the old city in order to bring in the government army, because the Salafists have no love for Syria's culture and history. Just as a photo of a 'cello broken by the force of the explosion near the Damascus Conservatoire will have appalled many in Syria who love music, so the destruction of the Aleppo Suq will bring tears to their eyes. But to the foreign fighters who are causing a problem to rebels and government troops the cultural destruction brings joy.

I spent years living in Syria, and more visiting. Syrians in general despised the crass ignorance of Saudi tourists who shared none of their cultural values but splashed their money around. Money from Saudi pockets now funds some of the violence, and is destroying not only some Syrian lives but also Syrian culture: including the great trading culture of Aleppo. It is a deliberate act, and one which Syrians, and anyone who has loved Syria must bemoan.

The poisonous climate of Syria

People who live in one society often have great difficulty imagining what is happening somewhere else. For those used to the luxuriant and complex freedoms of western countries, where we have vast choices from detergents to the media, it is hard to imagine a place like Syria.

Syria is a very sophisticated. Damascus has been a city longer than anywhere else, and living together as a  civitas is in the bones of the Damascenes.

But generations of oppression, of torture and fear, as well as media which anaesthetise the people, make it very difficult to read Syria. And the simplistic black and white approach which caused such chaos in Iraq seems to be in process again. The Foreign Secretary seems to see it simply as Bashar is a bad man and the rebels are good.
Bashar is a figurehead, surrounded by thugs, many of his own family. The system which holds him in power is a network of dependencies including people in every sect and ethnic group, and many of them, just like people anywhere, are capable of great evil.
And everyone lies. If not everyone, plenty of people are lying, telling half-truths, and wanting to spin data. In one sense it hardly matters who has perpetrated an atrocity; Syria, like so many countries which were part of the Ottoman Empire is now a place where people perpetrate evil on people they may or may not know, because the fear of the consequences has disappeared. And when a bomb goes off, it really could be anyone who did the deed, from so many twisted reasonings. So never admit, just lie and blamd.

For some, of course, there never were consequences. Before, any Alawites and their allies could do anything, rob a house, rape a girl, run over an old man on the main road, and know that they could walk away and no one would do anything. Now in the climate of hatred, the boundaries have been torn down for everyone.

And still there are the young men who demonstrate agains the regime. Not backed by Saudi money or arms, they want a say in their future, and they will throw stones and chant. These heroes may be forgotten in the chaos of the coming war in which Russia and Iran support the regime, and Saudi Arabia, backed by foolish westerners will wage a real, bullets and explosives and mines filled war to impose another grim oppression on these people, these Syrians who a long time ago were asking for some respect from the men who ran their country.

I won't forget them, the lads who don't want any deaths, and who are now already, many of them, dead.